For better or for worse, the past few weeks have reinforced the global interdependencies of our financial system. Money flows across borders with ease. Whole companies flow across borders with a bit more regulation, but with ease nonetheless.

On the startup end, I think the setting is a bit different. The startup industry is astoundingly global, which is just what the internet was designed to make possible. You don’t have to create your company in Silicon Valley anymore (thank god because the world can only handle so many social thing-a-ma-jiggies). What’s different with startups, however, is that the industry isn’t as globally aware of itself, or at least not obviously so. It’s global, but it’s hardly interdependent.

With that in mind, I’ve been on the look out for international startup sites. I’ve compiled what’s hardly a complete list (especially because its limited to English language sites), but it begins to shed light on the global startup scene. If I’ve left anything out, please let me know in the comments. First up, India and Eastern Asia:

India

Pluggd.In – Pluggd.In reminds me a lot of Silicon Alley Insider. It covers new startups, funding rounds, and general industry trends. Their team reflects their diversity and depth of coverage. They have an active user community, and my interactions with their Chief Blogger – Ashish Sinha – was largely what prompted me to write this post. You can also check out their newly launched (and better designed) Ecosystem, a directory of startups, VCs, incubators, etc.

Startups.In – Startups.In has been essential to this series and has helped me identify a few of the startups on this list. The site takes an Alltop.com-like approach with aggregated startup news from China, India, Kenya, and Korea (lucky me). It’s a great international resource, but after this International series by Enter Venture, they might need to update their list a bit.

Webyantra – Webyantra reads like a mix of Hacker News and TechCrunch. It has both startup news as well as random other tidbits they pluck from the founders’ other company, SlideShare. I get the impression Webyantra is one Indian startup feed you don’t want to go without.

DesiStartups – The startup for Indian startups is small but great. The blog covers several new Indian startups a month with an approach similar to Enter Venture. The site reviews early startups with a bit of constructive critiscm included. Most of their startups seem to be extremely early stage.

StartupDunia – StartupDunia does a great job covering the Indian startup scene, and surprisingly enough, it’s author isn’t even located in India! Pranav Dharma covers the Indian startup scene from Florida — go figure.

Business India 2.0 – Business India 2.0 focuses less on startups and more on the internet at large. Their most recent series of posts provides a great breakdown of the online advertising industry.

Also worth noting from India are YourStory, Thinking Aloud, MediaNama, Alootechie, Unwireindia, The Startup Guy, VC Circle, Trak.in’, WATBlog, TechPluto, and Venture Woods

Korea

TechnoKimchi – TechnoKimchi easily has the best name in this series. Taewoo Danny Kim writes an insightful blog about the human issues behind the web. Just check out his great About section or his analysis of the meaning of ’social’ in Asia with this post. It’s about people and technology, not just people or technology.

Web 2.0 Asia - Chang-Won Kim’s Web 2.0 Asia covers the Korean IT / tech industry with everything from events (Chang helped found Open Web Asia), new applications, and industry news. Chang’s other project (read: company) was just acquired by Google. Now, if only I could read Korean, I could explain what his company, TCN, does.

Korea Crunch – It looks like Korea Crunch went on hiatus for awhile, but now it’s back. From the looks of the snapshot on their most recent post, the blog looks to have a bunch of startups ready for review over the coming months.

Hong Kong

852 Signal – An homage to 37signals? Or something else entirely? I’m not sure, but maybe the blog’s founder, Angus Lau, will visit Enter Venture and tell us where the name comes from. In the meantime, 852 signal covers the next generation of web products coming out of Hong Kong. The blog is a great resource for finding out about new Asian startups without a lot of the noise on other sites. The site has a great, clean design and covers Hong Kong events, startup news, and anything else in the Hong Kong web tech market.

China

China Web 2.0 Review – The site focuses on interviews, search engines, social networking, and other web trends in China. As someone with little Chinese web awareness, I particularly liked their recent post, TrendsSpotting Handbook of Online China, which features a great slide deck on web penetration in China.

China Tech News – China Tech News isn’t exclusive to startups, but it covers the greater Chinese tech industry. In fact, this site seems to largely cover multinational companies and joint ventures, but like I said, I’m largely unaware of the Chinese startup scene. This seems like a good starting point for assessing the industry at large.

techblog86 – techblog86 covers the intersection of China’s mobile, tech, and startup worlds. Compared to ChinaTechNews, it’s also a sight for sore eyes. Not only does the site make use of a clean design, but it’s a lot closer to what we’re looking for in this startup site review. At least recently, the blog tends to focus on mobile web issues.

Singapore

Young Upstarts – Young Upstarts is a business and technology blog about new ideas and entrepreneurship. The blog covers Singaporean startups and events, but it’s not exclusive to Singapore. One of their recent posts features IdeaBlob, a U.S. based startup.

Project Senso – Project Senso is the Singaporean entrepreneur and founders network. The site features a blog on its homepage but the main use of the site seems to be its message boards.

Singapore Entrepreneur 27 – Singapore Entrepreneur 27 runs several tech events in a manner similar to the original Entrepreneur 27. The organization looks to be run by a group of students and early entrepreneurs.

Japan

Asiajin – Asiajin covers the Asian web industry but tends to focus on Japan. The site’s design isn’t all that impressive, and I originally underestimated the quality of its content. They do seem to have tapped into the Japanese startup scene with posts on events and a variety of different types of Japanese startups, and they feature links to a bunch of other Asian startups in the right sidebar. Check it out.

Also, notable from the inside, looking in.

Taiwan

Web 2.0 Play – Web 2.0 Play covers mobile and web applications from Taiwan. The site seems to be updated a few times a month with interviews, event reviews, and general industry news. It doesn’t seem to cover newly launched startups.

That’s all for now in this startup site series. Stay tuned for future posts as I’ll cover startup sites from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and everywhere in between.

Posted in International, Startups Comments